Foxy Brown (1974)

Foxy Brown (1974) Jack Hill wrote and directed Pam Grier in this classic blaxploitation film about a woman who takes revenge on the mobsters who murdered her man.

“Well who’s black and what is a black person?” – Pam Grier

Beneath all the pop pizzazz,

Jack Hill channels Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time

to jazz up a strong woman who could kick ass

and make self-reliant militant power feminine.

There’s no commodity like a female black body

Pam Grier knows; she has to represent.

Only blacks can police their community.

Stuck in B’s, she makes hers a fashion statement:

Psychedelic leather go-go boots,

bell bottoms, hip huggers, ginger snaps,

cropped floral blouse, halter-top jumpsuits,

pop yellow or rouge dress, flimsy silk straps,

oversized sunnies, sexy décolletage,

crop tops, polyester paisley sleeves,

hoop earrings to round out her assemblage,

all beneath a massive Afro weave.

Cross her and she’ll break your jaw.

She carries a Colt in her holster bra.

Blow a good black man away,

his woman will track you down some day.

Over the top violence galvanizes

Fox Spirit, beaten and bound, razor in her tongue,

coat hangers bent to rip out her rapist’s eyes,

and set the shack on fire, sex slavers hung;

having once busted up a lesbian bar,

she ends with the infamous pickle jar —

the maximum revenge one woman

can take on another woman.

[Disposable Poem February 2015]

Dr. Mike

“But I just loved looking at the clothes of the ’70s.” Pam Grier

“Foxy, I’m a black man, and I don’t know how to sing, and I don’t know how to dance, and I don’t know how to preach to no congregation. I’m too small to be a football hero, and too ugly to be elected mayor. But I watch TV and see all these folks and the nice homes they live in and all them fancy cars they drive, I just get so full of ambition. Now you tell me what I’m supposed to do with all this ambition?” – Antonio Fargas as Link Brown

“I want justice for all of them. And I want justice for all the people whose lives are bought and sold, so that a few big shots can climb up on their backs, and laugh at the law, and laugh at human decency. But most of all, I want justice for a man, this man had love in his heart, and he died because he went out of his neighborhood to do what he thought was right.” – Pam Grier as Foxy Brown